


The Greatest Friend Ever

by aban_ataashi



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, particularly concerning jester and what must have been a very lonely childhood, things i think about backstory reveals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-27 01:17:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13869996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_ataashi/pseuds/aban_ataashi
Summary: Jester laughs in delighted surprise, and for a moment it feels like someone is laughing alongside her.A look into the past of Jester and the god who became her best friend.





	The Greatest Friend Ever

Jester has a lot of friends.

They help keep her company, which is good because she gets pretty bored in her room all day. Not that her room isn’t nice; it’s very pretty, in fact, with a big fluffy bed and ribbons hanging from the ceiling and walls that are papered with her drawings. She gets almost anything she asks for, and her floor is strewn with books and toys and other activities to occupy her time.

But it’s still just one room. The view from her window never changes. The subjects in her books never hold her interest for more than a half hour or so. And although she never tires of drawing, she always reaches a point in the day where her hand cramps up or she runs out of paper. Then she’s left staring at the ceiling and listening to the music wafting up from the rooms below and wondering if any of the bouncers will notice if she goes downstairs _just for a minute_. (The answer is always yes).

The boredom is exhausting, but her friends make it better. And she has _so many_ of them. Some of her friends are princesses, and Jester sits with them in front of her mirror as together they try on jewelry and decorate their hair and horns in tassels. Some are dancers, and they twirl around in circles with Jester to the muffled songs from the floors below. Some are tiny horses and elephants that chase each other through the forts Jester builds out of pillows and blankets.

Jester draws portraits of them all, and shows them to her mother on the nights she comes to tuck Jester into bed. Her mother loves them, and tells Jester she has a wonderful imagination, and the praise just about makes Jester’s heart burst.

 

It’s fate that the book makes its way to Jester. It comes to her in a shipment of tomes, part of the endless supplies Jester is given ‘for her studies’. Jester has never been sure what those studies are supposed to be, exactly, but her mother says it’s important to know a little bit of everything.

She’s studying magic today, which is at least fairly interesting. Books on history and math are sentenced to the back of her closet almost immediately after she opens them. Magic is better. There are a lot of uses for magic, all kinds of tricks that she could do.

Jester is absentmindedly doodling an idea for a prank in the margins of the book when the symbol catches her eye. It’s not one she’s seen before, which is enough to pique her interest. She begins reading the text, and her simple curiosity shifts into something more. The description of the deity is at once both novel and familiar, like a dream she can’t quite remember. She studies the text until her eyes land on the doodle she’d left unfinished at the bottom of the page.

She’d drawn herself in the main room of the brothel, using one of the spells described in the book to send drinks from the bar splashing over the heads of clients. Her doodle had been rough and hastily sketched, but it’s… _different_ now. Details have been added in a dark brushstroke not at all like her own. Drawing-Jester’s hands are in a different position, with little arrows added as if to lay out the moment. The volume of the spilled drinks has increased to a near flood, and the eyes of the clients have been made to appear wide and startled.

Jester laughs in delighted surprise, and for a moment it feels like someone is laughing alongside her.

 

The Traveler turns out to be much better than Jester’s other friends. He’s more than a story Jester tells herself when she gets bored; he’s _real._ True, Jester doesn’t actually see him, or speak to him in the way she does to her mother or the other employees of the house, but that doesn’t matter. He still manages to communicate with her, and Jester tells him _everything_. She begins to keep a journal so that she can illustrate her stories; he seems to like her drawings, especially the dicks. He watches and listens, and begins to teach her all kinds of neat things.

The first is a blessing, and when Jester casts it on herself she becomes much quicker and quieter and able to avoid the bouncers that patrol the house. Soon she’s able to sneak downstairs nearly every night to watch her mother sing in person, instead of listening through her bedroom door. Another trick lets her change the way she looks, and she spends hours in front of her mirror changing her face and imagining all the amazing pranks she could use this for. Her favorite spell of them all is duplicity, which creates _another Jester._ The copy-Jester is more like Jester’s old friends, in that she doesn’t talk and can’t be touched, but the illusion is delightful all the same.

Her antics go unnoticed for some time, although Jester makes no real effort to hide anything. The occupants of the brothel are used to her by now, and noises from her room or messes left in her wake are not unusual. It isn’t until Jester’s mother enters her room one day to find her in deep, one-sided conversation with her double that she realizes something is different.

Jester is excited to tell her mother all about the Traveler, who quickly realizes that this is no imaginary friend. Her face clouds with concern, and for a moment Jester is terrified that she’ll be asked to stop talking to the Traveler. But her mother only makes her promise to be careful, which is an easy promise to make. Jester is always careful.

She spends the rest of that day attempting to summon a sacred flame to light the candles in her room. The resulting fire is quickly stamped out and only ruins one set of curtains, so Jester considers it a pretty good success.

 

When Jester leaves Nicodranas, a part of her fears that her connection with The Traveler will be left behind as well. But he stays with her, through all the distance she travels and the things she sees and the people she meets. He stays with her even as she joins with others and they form a group, a real group with a fancy name and everything.

Just like before, Jester has a lot of friends. But these are so much better than anything that was ever born from her boredom and imagination. They talk and laugh and eat pastries together. The best part is that The Traveler, her first and best friend ever, seems to like them, too.


End file.
